


Skirophorion

by Abby_Ebon



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Alternate Universe - Siblings, Arcadia - Freeform, F/F, F/M, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Greek and Roman Mythology - Freeform, Hades!Peter Hale, Incest, M/M, Multi, Persephone Cycle, Persephone!Lydia, Persephone!Stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-02
Updated: 2014-02-02
Packaged: 2018-01-10 20:51:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1164385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abby_Ebon/pseuds/Abby_Ebon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He took them once, and now they take him back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Skirophorion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wolfwrecked (endearest)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/endearest/gifts), [hawk-and-handsaw (Tumblr)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=hawk-and-handsaw+%28Tumblr%29), [CkyKing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CkyKing/gifts).



> I use/abuse the epithets of the Lord of the Underworld, these being: 
> 
> Aïdês/Aïdôneus (“Hades”, uncertain meaning: a-idein, whence it would signify "the god who makes invisible," and others from hadô or chadô; so that Hades would mean "the all embracer," or "all-receiver.")  
> Ploutodotēs/Ploutodotēr, "giver of wealth"  
> Agesander/Agesilaos/Hegesilaus, “the god who carries away all”  
> Ploutôn (Of Wealth)  
> Isodetês (the god who binds all equally)  
> Clymenus ("notorious")  
> Theôn Khthonios (God of the Underworld)  
> Zeus Khthonios (Zeus of the Underworld)  
> Polysêmantôr (Ruler of Many)  
> Polydegmôn/Poludektês (Host of Many)  
> Polyxenos (Host of Many/Strangers)  
> Nekrodegmôn (Receiver of Many)  
> Nekrôn Sôtêr (Savior of the Dead)  
> Eubouleus/Euboulos (Good Councilor, well-disposed/intentioned)

 

 

The stars called the Big Dipper shine bright, the tail of the Great Bear warns of the danger of Theôn Khthonios who walks among the living. When and where he wills it, as a son of a mortal mother, with the living blood of ancient kings and queens stirring beneath skin that can bruise and bones that can break – yet still a God, is Aïdês, whatever form he takes is his.

 

Why he does so, is a strange thing (but among the Gods and Goddesses, they hold that Aïdôneus is the strangest son born to Rhea).

 

Ages ago (before the making of man by Athena and Prometheus) Koure, the maiden, who is also called Persephone – for Hekate the Titan Perses’s only daughter by Asteria, sister of Leto – was a companion to her - and called herself the “destructive voice” partly in Hecate’s honor – she, daughter of Demeter, made by the mud of the river Okeanos a man out of the flesh of Gaia.

 

Her father Zeus caught her at this, and at her request gave the image life, and when Koure would have given it her own name – Zeus forbad it and offered his own name, to which Gaia forbad in turn, for man was of her flesh; this quarrel they took to Kronos for his judgment.      

 

It passed that Zeus in giving life would have sway over its fate, and born of the flesh of Gaia would walk upon it and know her, but in death would pass into Koure’s hands. Such did not dismay Demeter over much, that her daughter who was Goddess of spring growth should have claim to the Underground from which the harvest sprang.

 

Demeter was lawgiver in those days, favored daughter of Kronos who had disgorged her from his gut second to last but was second born at birth, passed two laws for mortal and immortal alike – one which is that any who ate of the food of the dead would have their life and fate tied to it ever after, and the next that any immortal who ate of the body of humans – named homo for humus, ate too of the body of Gaia and so would die.

 

(Zeus would wrestle Kronos for his throne one day, and win, and in winning would war with the sons of heaven and earth for ten long years – only to one day with his brothers Poseidon and Hades draw lots for the domain of the sky, sea and underworld. Koure kept those buried to the under earth, while Hades took was lord of the abode of the dead, and Erebus was air of that darkness where Nyx and her children dwell – while Tartarus laid deepest beneath the rest, a stormy pit where the Titans would be caged away.)

 

None of mankind now are older than that of the Arkadian line born before Selene, the time of the Moon, those that are said to be the oldest people of all Greece whose God-like king Lykaôn was fathered by Pelasgus (as before they were Arkadian they were called Pelasgian) ; the first mortal man born of Zeus, for his mother was Niobe, the first mortal woman loved by the God of Thunder. Niobe’s father was Phoroneus, son of the river Inachus who’s wandering daughter Io had settled in Egypt and ruled it with her son by Zeus.

 

(Those in Egypt called Io as Isis, and her son Apis - and her daughter Keroessa alone claims no other name, for she is the mother of Byzas who founded Byzantium and named the Golden Horn (Khryso _keras_ ) in his mother’s honor. Byzantium has, in Roman times called Constantinople for their Emperor, and is now a modern Istanbul.)

 

Wild and mountainous is Arcadia still, for all that the oldest city in the world is there, called Lykosoura for Lykaôn, on Mount Lykaios (birthplace of Zeus, where he was nursed Neda, Theisoa and Hagno by some may still claim).

 

Yet born among Lykaôn’s many sons was a daughter who would be more famous by far then any brother of hers born to give their names to cities as their father Lykaôn and mother Nônakris had done. She was Kallisto and she hunted with the famed Nomia upon whose knees she had been reared - and whose mountain she loved most, so was never far from her side.

 

It was once on a visit to famed Mount Kyllene, her grandmother’s mountain (Kyllene was called Meliboia by her father, Heaven and Earth born Okeanos) that she first met Zeus in the guise of Hermes in a storm, and they shared a rustic dance and ate from the first cornucopia, the she-goat Amaltheia’s horn.

 

Pan was born to her with his hairy legs ending in hooves and curling horns, not long after – but it was Sinoe and Nomia who reared and nursed him in the wild. He met the true Hermes upon the slopes of Maia’s dwelling and learned the truth of his fathering from the slayer of Argus; it was Pan’s son Seilenos who would be foster father to mortal born Dionysus, generations later. To give truth to the lie of his father, Hermes would name many of his sons in Pan’s honor.

 

It was in the guise of Artemis that Zeus came next to Kallisto, and when she was heavy with another child, she told her father of the doings of the God against her. Lykaôn and all his sons where made furious against the God, and when Zeus came in the guise of a laborer, wandering and in search for hospitality – for in those days, Gods and Goddesses feasted with kings and queens and called them kin for their kindness to such supposed strangers, Lykaôn knew him - for Kallisto his daughter and Nônakris his wife both birthed boys the night before the coming of Zeus, whose daughter by Hera was Eileithyia named for the relief she gave to women’s labor.

 

It was Arkas he took up while Kallisto could not protest in her sleep (and about her mother Nônakris the nurses fussed with Nyktimos, his last born, his heir) and slaughtered it, mixing the babe’s flesh and blood among the feast being prepared and alter sacrifices; a mocking of Zeus to not know his own flesh and blood among that of the wolf being offered.   

 

(Prometheus would later make sure that no God or Goddess could die by such an accident as consuming human flesh, for he was the father of humanity and tricked Zeus to accepting in sacrifice the fat and bones of a bull.)

 

Gaia who favored Lykaôn the most of his entire race- sat too at the table when Zeus did, beside her grandson (though he did not know her). It when Zeus heard Kallisto weeping for her babe, that none of her brothers partook of the offering - and by Lykaôn’s sneering look, guessed what flesh was within the feast, and raged, overturning the table, and burned by lightning the house of Lykaôn until it was not but rumble.

 

Hurling his thunderbolts that forced Lykaôn and all his sons into the shape of wolves –

Zeus would have done the same to Nyktimos, had not Gaia took hold of Zeus’s right hand and made him spare the babe.

 

(Upon the house of Lykaôn, Arkas built the town of Trapezus.)

 

Instead Zeus forced Kallisto into the shape of a bear, and left Nônakris weeping with her daughters Dia (who would be mother of Dryops by Apollo) and Psophis, who held tight to the babe Nyktimos. They pleaded that Gaia give a body anew to Kallisto’s slain son, and this she did – Arkas she took up to Mount Kyllene, where Maia the mother of Hermes offered to rear the babe as her own – and to this Gaia consented, giving the land the name of the Arkadia for the child she had raised up from the land which had tasted his death-blood.

 

That day, Helios went to Okeanos in the west and the Moon, his sister Selene, raised her face full for the first time in the east. Where before Hekate had led horned and winged Mene across the sky.

 

(Ever since, the Lykaôn and his wolf shifting sons have known upon the full moon the helplessness of a beast rising within them and taking them away body and soul – so Arkas might have felt at his own murder.)

 

Arkas was the greatest hunter who ever was to roam the land called Arkadia after him, Pan called his brother twin to him, and loved him dearly. Whom the rustic God loved, his folk loved also, none more than Pan’s prophetess Erato who was the dryad nymph of an oak-tree called Khrysopeleia and became a mother to his sons who would be kings of Arkadia after him. Arkas had saved her from the first flood of the river Styx, which had rushed of the mountains and never gone from them since.

 

(Amyklas, king of Sparta, would send to Arkas his daughters Laodamia and Leanira to be wives to the king of Arkadia – and Meganeira, daughter of Krokon was to be his mistress.) 

 

It is upon the Styx that the Gods and Goddesses make unbreakable vows for she had favored Zeus with her four children over her Titan husband, and won by her children’s natures for Zeus his throne. 

 

One vow is to his brother Plouton that made Zeus in secret gave him the daughter of Demeter and their brother Poseidon who was twin to Areiôn, Despoinê who was his mistress and bore to him Zagreus, his child who would be king after he..

 

It was Arkas who learned of this from Styx as he slept, for she had whispered to him that vow as a serpent in his ear, and when he’d woken from sleep he was thus transformed into a woman. Arkas became a Arkadia in truth, and went to uncle and age-mate Nyktimos, who had learnt the art cultivating crops from Triptolemos, favored of Demeter and Despoinê.

 

(Arkas as Arkadia bore to Nyktimos a daughter, Philonome who hunted at the side of the maiden Koure and Hekate, and saw Pan give to Artemis, sister to Apollo and daughter of Zeus and Leto the sister of Hecate’s mother, her dogs – and it was Pan who taught Apollo prophecy – but Philonome was seduced by Ares in the guise of a shepherd, and in fear of the wrath of her father and brother, she cast the newborns into the care of the river Erymanthus. They did not drown but washed ashore in the hollow of a oak tree, where a she-wolf found and suckled them giving up her own cubs for the sake of Ares’s sons, the shepherd Glyphius reared them and named them Lycastus and Parrhasius.)

 

At the word of Nyktimos, Despoinê came to Arcadia by the back of her brother Areiôn (as he was known to mortals in his horse form, to the immortals he was Anytus and had reared and cared for Despoinê all his life; in the form of a man he was Trophonius to those same nymphs and mortals).

 

It was warmly they were welcomed, Demeter and Artemis and Despoinê and Anytus, and the event was put to stone in Lykosoura.

 

Arkadia hunted with Artemis upon Mount Kyllene, and both saw at the same time Kallisto, the bear mother of Arkas – and when Artemis hurled a arrow at her heart with her famed silver bow, mother and child cried out together as if dying - and Artemis knowing she had done wrong by her host gathered like glowing embers the spirit of Kallisto and cast her to the dark heavens as the constellation Arktos Megale (Great Bear).

 

His mother so made an immortal, Arkas –for he was youth and not maid as he breathed easier at the side of the Goddess, a youth of fifteen who vowed to virginity if the Goddess of the Hunt would grant him the favor of a maiden form. Artemis, discomforted by the youth who had been both maid and man, gave him his wish.

 

Nyktimos could not deny that he had seen what had happened, and thought Artemis was furious he had hidden from them while hunting; yet before she could react and strike – the darkens of night was burned away by the sun chariot’s wild course. 

 

It was not her wrath which made the night burn into swift day, but that of Zeus – who goaded the son of Helios in the form of his son Epaphos, and made the reckless youth burn the world – Athena had brought to him the heart of his heir Zagreus, and the whole world would know his wrath and fury.

 

(It is not until Okeanos weeps for piety and Gaia his mother is scorched into whimpering prayers that Zeus hurls his thunderbolt and strikes down Phaethon and lets Okeanos and Nereus and Pontos and Thalassa rise up and swallow the world – embracing Gaia, their close kin - until the waters touch the feet of Selene and she fears, but sets her eyes upon Arktos Megale who never touches the waters of Okeanos, and for her sake Poseidon reigns in the waters.)

 

Artemis never raised her hand against Nyktimos, but saved him and the maid he called his wife upon the Mount Kyllene, with Maia who stood at her side, weeping for the sake of her foster child’s breed.

 

Of that brazen Bronze race, few are left living when the Great Deluge recedes.

 

Deukalion the son of Prometheus and Pyrrha the daughter of Pandora and Epimetheus survive to throw the bones of their mother, the stones of Gaia that spring to life as stones, sons if thrown by Deukalion and daughters if by Pyrrha.

 

King Dardanos sought refuge on Mount Ida in the Troad, Kerambos was carried to the heights of Mount Othrys by the Nymphs, Megaros fled to Mount Gerana, and the tribe of Parnassos who followed the howling of wolves and fled to the heights above Delphoi –there they build a city which will be the birthplace of Orpheus.

 

(In Egypt Io’s son Epaphos weeps for the loss of Phaethon, but in his mourning the son of Zeus does not join the seven Heliades sisters of Phaethon as poplar trees weeping amber tears upon the shore of the river Eridanos which washes down from Mount Nysa – when the Deluge recedes, it remains beneath the waves.) 

 

Maia sees then the starry heavens rests upon her father Atlas’s shoulders and she calls to her sisters, wordlessly, and the seven Mountain Goddesses raise as Stars to help their father bear the Heaven’s weight. They dwell no more upon their mountains, the primal mothers of mankind – but join their sisters the Hyades and their brother the constellation Aquarius, hiding their brother from the eyes of Leo as they do.

 

(Zeus will say that those he and his brother Poseidon and a mortal loved fled from Orion’s lustful embrace if asked – and Artemis will hunt with him and slay him for a deed he did not do, and Gaia too will rise up a Scorpion that hunts the hunter.)

 

Demeter and Rhea and Artemis come to Nyktimos where he dwells with Maia’s mother Pleione and the child of Kallisto, to ask if they saw what had happened to Trophonius and Despoinê who had been in sight of Nysa’s shadow in the southern fields – they look to see now not but the sea, Hekate and Koure searching it still – it is admitted by Nyktimos that he had seen them fall, holding hands with quiet lips – swallowed up by the earth before the Deluge and the darkness had gripped the whole world.

 

(Aïdês could not choose between the twins and neither had fled from his face and the chariot of his black horses, so he took both, down, down, down into the depths of the earth from which they could never escape him.)

                       

So Theôn Khthonios had willed – and Zeus in the end kept his vow.

 

(It was the twelfth month the Athens called Skirophorion, the same month as the birth of the twins.)

 

Hera gifted to her brother a pomegranate, and this did Despoinê eat under silent protest (for Eubouleus had offered it to her, and it was eat it or watch Trophonius scream under the whips of the Eumenides) – but Hecate and Koure and Hermes found out what Agesander had done, and went at once to confront him. They found Despoinê solemn and her lips stained and bruised deep red and Areiôn in his dark mane horse form, with wet brown eyes.

 

The swift footed herald of Zeus brought word to his father the deeds of Zeus Khthonios, and Zeus for the sake of peace with his sister Demeter and his brother Poseidon, judged against his brother Hades in the taking of the twins, for Areiôn and Despoinê were born of one mother – and in soul were one though in body they were two, what had been done to one but not the other should not – could not – be counted together as a cost to both, and so neither could be held against their wills in the House of Polyxenos.

 

(Areiôn and Despoinê were made to drink of Lethe, forgetfulness, and it worked to well for they forgot themselves and fled from all who had known them.)

 

The brother of Zeus never forgot this slight – and never forgave the taking back of what he had been promised.

 

Yet this Gaea approved of, for she wanted a fertile world for the newly born breed of mankind sprung of stone and the oaks of Rhea’s old Arcadian guardians; where mankind tasted first the acorns of oaks and knew no better food – and these did Nyktimos with his  Arkadia did rule, who first called their people Druid.

 

Mountain roaming Rhea with her chariot of lions came upon Nyktimos and Arkadia, unhappy rulers, for they could not love each other as they willed – for Arkadia was a maiden, and bade them to chose a king to rule after them – and this they did, and she, with a kiss upon each brow, made the two take the shape of serpents, one male and one female to please her mother Gaia and her daughter Demeter and her granddaughters Despoinê and Koure who wished them marked so to show their favor.

 

It was not until Teiresias upon Mount Kyllene found them out and struck them as coupling serpents that they recalled who they had been, and in their remembering Hera swept them into the stars as Arktos Mikra (Little Bear) and Arktophylax (Bear Water), yet she could not forgive Zeus his slight and so asked of her nurse Tethys that the Bears never know the rest of the river Oceanus – and this was so.

 

(For a score of seven years Teiresias walked upon the world as a woman – the deed of Hera who held grudge against him for the favor of Apollo and Athena, the children of Zeus by other than she.)

 

Yet it is also so that despite Lykaôn’s wrath against Zeus, it is not so he holds hate for Isodetês as he is an honored guest and has never known the whips of the Eumenides, nor their bloody fields.  

 

It is when Arktos Megale’s tail is brightest that warns that one of Lycaon’s blood is born as the Nekrôn Sôtêr, and this is true the night of Peter Hale’s birth.

 

(As Aïdês had learnt the art of reincarnating himself from the first born Zagreus, whose body had been torn apart by Titans led by Atlas at the urging of Hera and Gaia – for Zeus had given that son by Despoinê his thunderbolts and his throne and scepter, but his heart Athena had saved and given to Zeus, and from his blood sprang the pomegranate which is ever a symbol of Hera for her victory in keeping the crown from child not her own – and to Aïdês, for it is the fruit of the dead God. Later he would give to the daughter of Harmonia a drink of that heart and Semele would not live to birth Dionysus, but from the thigh of Zeus he would be cut out in bloody birth.)

 

It is the Eumenides, daughters of Nyx that take – at his own request – out the heart of Eubouleus. 

 

(It is ages and ages gone by, but Nekrodegmôn recognizes them, his stolen twins, when he hears Hypnos tell to Nyx how all but a few young Gods and Goddesses sleep, how many Aïdês does not know or care – it is right to him that after all that mortals endured by the family of his siblings, that they are put to deep sleep from which the primal ones do not let them slip into waking from. It is the word of the daughters of Nyx that keeps Eubouleus from that deep abyss of sleep, for always has his abode been open to all the dead.) 

 

The Eumenides, they give it as a drink to a daughter of the line of Lykaon, wolf-king of Arcadia – so it is that Talia Hale watches her mother’s belly grow with her younger brother even as Talia settles down to raise children of her own.

 

\----

 

Names mean nothing to Peter Hale; he’s got many, many names as he truly is.

 

He grows up with his sister Talia – if not happy – content, for she loves him and he respects her in his own way, though he is jealous of her power as Alpha, and she can shift from wolf to woman at will.

 

Yet Beacon Hills, if not a happy home, is a refuge for those things that seek light in a world where Hypnos has put to sleep all the truly powerful. A sanctuary of woods and modern built side by side – it does not surprise Peter to see. After all, is where they are, his avowed mates, they live as mere mortals do and this is alright, for they are made ignorant and obvious by the slow memory stealing waters of Lethe. Once he tried to take them by force and feed them the food of the dead God- to make them truly his, but they were stolen away, and drank of Lethe deeply.   

 

(Deucalion is a name he hears from Talia’s lips first, and laughs as his heart fills with hate for the Titan born of Prometheus, who had given mankind fire and gifts – and the Deluge.)

 

The family who hunts with the name Silver has hunted him – trapped him, trapped them, his _family_ , he hears them screaming, smells flesh burning. It makes the wolf remember the wrath of Zeus and the fall of Lykaon’s House. He gets out, somehow, with the wild desperation of the wolf willing to bite off its own limbs to be free.

 

He is burnt by the fire, and screaming forms the pain and the smell, seeks deep within him, to find calm and healing. They call it a coma. He is awake and aware and remembering always, fire, fire, fire.

 

He knows they have been manipulated and deceived, these Silver ones, by Deucalion, who did not get his way.

 

Who was blind- and now blinded.

 

(And will pay and pay and _pay_. )

 

He burns and burns because they hate him as he hates them.

 

(He is a God, and so he does not let his mortal body truly die.)

 

Healing hurts, and time does not make his hate (his madness) cease.

 

When he wakes from his hurts, he is weak (weaker than mortal can ever know); he seeks vengeance and slays his own blood (a coward’s way, his sister’s daughter – a Alpha like she was, but he sees only power for revenge and feels only jealousy and hate – there is no place in him for brighter and better things) he thinks only to get the power to take down Deucalion.

 

(To bury him, and gift him to the whips of the daughters of Nyx ….)

 

He thinks that she and he had been the last of Lykaon’s blood. He weeps at a park – blood of his sister’s eldest daughter, the Alpha (he recalls his mate, another sister’s daughter) staining his hands, making his eyes bleed red - but is not alone, for she is there with her auburn hair and hazel eyes that light like green ambrosia at seeing him. She, at first, does not speak – and he thinks it is because she remembers him.

 

“Lydia?” Peter watches her watch him, and knows she is here with a friend – with a girl born of the family called Silver, and he goes when she glances away toward the sound of her friend’s voice, he flees into the forest before she can say a word (or he can try to take her away).

 

He can still taste the blood of the pomegranate upon her lips after so many ages and knows it sits heavily in her belly.

 

(Deucalion is gone, and none of the family called Silver knows where he has gone.)

 

He finds Lydia who is Despoinê on a field in a dress, and bites her and so finds her brother who Scott (a boy Peter only partly recalls the biting of) calls Stiles, but by his nectar golden eyes, Peter knows him for Trophonius. He bargains for the girl whom he loves and worships but thinks as a would-be lover and not as a sister – it is so funny it makes Peter hurt not to laugh.

 

He offers the bite, and is refused and holds no grudge against that wish, as being a wolf would not truly suit the horse-born son of Demeter.

 

Yet still Peter makes his boy take him to Derek – and it’s a trap, of course it is – for Scott and hunters surnamed for Silver try to kill him, again – but Peter isn’t trapped, and he has something to fight for (a future he can see beyond fire and blood). 

 

Jackson (another boy he almost killed or bit, but does not remember well) and Stiles (in these moments Peter must think of he and Trophonius as being separate, else he’d hurt one he wants only to be his lover) set him afire – and Derek cuts his throat and takes by the living blood the power of a Alpha.

 

It weakens him and sends him screaming away from the fire and pain, fearing again to be burned alive – but this time, it is the song of his Despoinê that wakens him from slumber like the death.

 

Lydia does not know him, but within her Despoinê fully wakes, quickened by pomegranate seeds and prepares to bring Peter Hale back to life with moonlight and the touch of Derek, his Alpha to quicken the wolf within him –he wakes, yes, but it is a waking that Despoinê has prepared for him.

 

It is, of course, not a situation he had been prepared for; his body had been brought to the beautiful gardens of Hale House. She comes and goes as she pleases, wild in her ways – untamed and untouchable, she alone had brought the wolfbane drugged Alpha and took him away again – and Peter does not think that anyone else knows he is caged here by her.

 

The first few days, he watches her, and she pays little mind to him, lounging in the sun with a book before her face - or sunbathing (all that pale skin displayed like a challenge he can not take). Or she sings and the garden grows before his eyes, wild, where Demeter had harvested food for mankind, Despoinê is a Goddess of Growth (and he knows of Death).

 

“What will you do with me?” Peter asks her, his first words to her, speaking as Hades to Despoinê.

 

She smiles, teeth too white and too sharp for it to be anything but a threat, a wolf’s warning snarl.

 

“What I will, when I will.” She leaves – and it is worse, so much worse alone.

 

There is nothing familiar growing in her garden, neither mint or asphodel, or trees like the cypress of lamination or eerie white poplar -  it is all so green and bright colors full of sunflowers and lotus, and ripe red apples that hang from shading branches, mockingly like the pomegranate within Despoinê. There are fruits and vegetables that grow and never ripen, mocking him with their very presence.

 

There is corn, and he hates it.

 

She comes back, watering her plants and silent – almost sullen, and he wants her to look at him – to speak to him, but she goes about her day pretending he isn’t where she left him. It’s maddening.

 

“At least grow something decently.” He says, as if she is would be an embarrassment to her mother Demeter and grand-mother Rhea and the great-mother Gaia – when he knows very well she isn’t.

 

She doesn’t so much as bat an eyelid.

 

“You can’t keep me here forever. You will let me loose, or slip up, and I’ll never set eyes on you again – that’s what you want, isn’t it?” At that she looks to him, and stokes the skin of her bare belly thoughtfully.

 

“Would pomegranate comfort you?” He does not answer her, he has what he wants – her attention, her acknowledgement – but before she goes, he licks his lips and answers the only question she’s put to him.

 

It’s yes, and he has to think of it as if it’s a compromise, when knows very well it’s her victory. 

 

The pomegranate is a two-edged blade, within her, and calling to him.

 

She does not bring him a pomegranate (or at least not only that).

 

“Where are you taking me, Lydia?” It’s Stiles that Peter hears, and he gets to his feet and waits, naked as the day he was born in his Despoinê’s garden. To see Stiles, his Trophonius again – at all – it’s more than what he’s dared hope for, to see them together – so near, yet so far from his touch still.

 

“You’ll see when you get there, won’t you? Hold your horses, Stiles.” In her white hands is a red pomegranate, and her smile tells a secret joke.

 

Stiles with eyes the color of the nectar of the Gods stares, Despoinê’s twin brother – who she loved so much she ate pomegranate to stop his screaming. Yet those screams had not all been in pain – there had been pleasure, and she had seen all that Peter had done to him – yet still lets her brother glimpse his tormenter. Her smiles still hides secrets.

 

“What’s this?” Stiles asks of her, hushed but too trusting to yet flee.

 

“A surprise, don’t you like it? He’s all ours.” Lydia runs a finger down Peter’s chest, her nail pricking his skin, unafraid of any threat he might offer them – and rightly, for the cage she has made is not one of Hephaestus made metal, but of magic and growth, of life to catch death.

 

“What?” Stiles swings wide eyes toward her face, and she digs her fingers into the flesh of the pomegranate, and breaks it, halves it and offers it to Stiles as if it’s only a apple, a bit of something fruity to eat for a snack – and while Peter watches with wide eyes, Stiles does just that, eats it, licking the juice from his fingers – and Peter, Peter can’t look away.

 

“Do you remember, yet?” Lydia prompts, with raised brows, the look all Despoinê – and her brother has one more moment of Lethe induced humanity, confused and conflicted, before he hunches his shoulders and laughs soft but long.

 

“Oh, oh sister – if anyone saw this but us…” Trophonius raises his eyes and meets boldly those of Aïdês, and it is worth it – worth the trap, to see his red stained lips smile so freely.

 

“No one will.” Despoinê promises and kisses Trophonius, licking the juice from his lips.

 

She offers the other half of the pomegranate to him – and he knows this will change things, that he will be fertile – that he will be theirs as much as they were always to be his.  He takes it, and eats – and stays in their garden for months and months.

 

None of them are surprised when Hypnos comes to see them, to tell to them that the home of the dead is neglected and they must go – and they do, all together, part of every year above in the garden that never dies and never is harvested – and part below, where it is dark and misty, but they warm their skin with each other and never feel the chill.

 

(Always before had the son of Kronos felt that chill and despaired of it, feeling it like a living death.)

**Author's Note:**

> This is a mix of two prompts, one a picture with tiny type at the end that reads:
> 
> “Τα διδυμα Περσεφονη::The Persephone Twins | a Stiles & Lydia myth  
> Born on a Skirophorion sunrise, hands clutching towards one another, mouths quiet. Hades himself could not settle his love for just one, so took them both down, down, down.” -  
> http://wolfwrecked.tumblr.com/post/60797403545/the-persephone-twins-a
> 
> And the other by hawk-and-handsaw: "Reverse hades/persephone, where the young daughter of summer uses plant magic to ensnare the lord of darkness and keep him prisoner in a beautiful garden above ground. Eventually, enchanted by her cleverness and wild youth he agrees to eat six pomegranate seeds and stay with her for half of every year.” -  
> http://militantennui.tumblr.com/post/69992646514/areyoutryingtodeduceme-heartslogos
> 
> This is also for CkyKing who gave me these links and listened to me ramble about mythology for about a week before I fixed this up the way I wanted it to be.


End file.
